Essential Baby blogger Kylie Orr
As I look down at my sad and sorry excuse for a cleavage, I try to remember that babies are miracles that enhance our lives. Whichever way you look at it, the same can’t be said for what havoc pregnancy, labour and breastfeeding can wreak on our bodies.
There is certainly a minority of women who rejoice their post-baby bodies, welcoming the changes. I think the three of them live on a commune in Northern NSW and burnt their last bras in 1960.
I am one of the fortunate ones; breastfeeding seems to help the process of losing post-baby weight and I somehow scored the lucky gene that helps me stay slim. Naturally there are still fat deposits dotted around my body that weren’t there before I had children. I would be more than content to take those on the chin …and the hips, the thighs, the bottom, and the stomach… if some of those same fat deposits were distributed to my bosom. Glorified sweat glands they may be, but that’s not stopping me from lamenting my loss.
To give you some background, I had my first bra fitting aged 15. Prior to that I just wore those pretend training bra singlet things that made you feel like all the other girls but actually achieved nothing bar an extra layer of warmth. I was doing my Debutante Ball and mum took me to a large department store to purchase a new bra as a special treat. The buxom and ancient sales lady who waddled like a duck with a behind that demanded its own postcode, sent me into the change room with a couple of teeny tiny bras.
“Let me know when you’re ready!” she bellowed and before I could say yay, she burst in and caught me in my flat-chested glory. I scrambled to hide what little I had. Rather than help me with the bra, she simply stated, “I don’t think you need a bra, dear. We have some lovely lace camis that would be fine under your deb dress.”
Kill that self-esteem: stomp on it and turn it to dust. Thanks lady. I left completely demoralised and devastated. My inadequacy has been the bust of all boob jokes within the family. I am a member of the itty bitty titty club and owner of numerous gel, push-up and padded bras that go no way to fool anyone that I have something other than mosquito bites on my chest.
Come along pregnancy and although my bosom did not swell to the DD I was hoping for, I certainly had more substance in that area than before. Once the baby was born, and the milk exploded through the milk ducts, well! Engorgement? Bring it on! Never mind the pain, will you look at these hummers?! My husband was in hell. His wife walking around topless with her newly acquired breastage and he was cordoned off to a ten-kilometre radius because the only visitors permitted near them were cabbage leaves. And the baby.
Fast-forward six years, three babies down the track and my chest has taken a real pounding. Last baby now weaned and the dismal state of my boobs is nothing less than confidence destroying. I don’t have the sag of which other women complain, because it’s pretty hard to sag an anthill. There is just nothing left. Skin on ribs. That’s it. If I drop crumbs down my top, they land on my feet. If I wear a tight fighting top, I look like a twelve-year-old boy. A child snuggling into my ample bosom? No chance. Head bashing on a rattly set of ribs is what they’ll get.
My long suffering GP has endured my constant disdain at the miserable state of my post-breastfeeding boobs. “What are we going to do about these boobs?” I implore. His answer? “Kylie, I’m not a plastic surgeon.” I’m not going there. Or to Thailand.
The cruelty of being given a wondrous cleavage on loan only for it to disintegrate before your eyes as soon as you cease breastfeeding tends to be lost on most men. My husband thinks it is all terribly superficial and trivial – he’s just excited to have something that was the baby’s domain back on his turf.
I wonder how he would feel if he was adorned a larger penis for six years and then had it rudely decrease in size, further and further with each subsequent child? I wonder how trivial and superficial it would feel then?
When I sit down and think about it, I should have the utmost respect for my body. Amazingly, it grew and fed three healthy babies. I welcome the curves and the added extras that come with the territory of undertaking that fantastic accomplishment. Unfortunately it also came with a false sense of entitlement to something other than an A cup that I haven’t quite shaken.
We’re all very lucky to have grown people and nurtured them but that doesn’t mean we have to revel in the aftermath that is our body after baby. Maybe it’s not your boobs, maybe it’s a stomach you simply can’t flatten or hips that are living at separate sides of Australia. One day, I will embrace this body of mine and appreciate all it has done for me. I’ll stop staring at my ribs in the mirror, willing some massive gazungas to magically appear and be thankful I don’t have a crook back from years of carrying around a heavy chest. I’ll look at the three people who started off as specs and are now living, breathing marvels and be thankful that deflated boobs are the worst of my worries.
How has your body changed after having children? Is it for better or for worse? Comment on Kylie Orr's blog here.
